"Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."
- Romans 5:1-5
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Everyone experiences suffering. We all have. Some of us to much harsher and more difficult degrees than others, but we have still all felt the sting of suffering in some way. And some of us even feel it right now.
And that suffering can make joy really hard.
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Sometimes suffering creates these really hard situations where feeling joy would almost seem artificial. It would make us feel like we were fake. It makes us think that the present context shouldn't allow joy; it should only be creating sorrow.
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But even still, joy is sort of talked abut as this attitude or demeanor we carry which blankets our life and the way we see the world. No matter what.
And I do agree with that assessment of joy. But the question that remains is how do we maintain or preserve that joy in suffering when joy appears to be the last response appropriate for the situation?
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I think the answer to that question is in the wording of this passage.
"Rejoice in hope."
Hope.
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Hope is the key to joy which we are supposed to have embedded deep in our souls. We are able to maintain joy because we have hope. Hope in the future. Hope in what is to come. Hope in that this suffering is not the end.
We have joy simply because we have hope.
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So I am here to suggest that perhaps the source to a problem with joy is actually a problem with hope.
We all know what people who lack hope look like. They are the pessimists. And I can say that because that has been (and sometimes still is) me. It's the people who can't give anything in the world the benefit of the doubt. It's the people who scoff at idealist-type ideas because they lack confidence in humanity and its ability to at all now resemble what it was meant to be. It is because they have no hope.
And that is because to them it is foolish to hope in something so broken and something so shattered.
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On the contrary, we also know what people who have hope look like. They show sincere love and gentleness in the awful times. They shine in all that they do. And in the bad situations they shine all the more because they see potential where everyone else sees waste. To them, the foolish thing is to write off something that was created good in an effort to appear realistic.
They shine with hope because they have allowed the Holy Spirit to pour God's love into their hearts.
God's love. Not theirs.
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One thing we have to understand is that we don't have the capability to love well. God gives us the capability to love people we wouldn't otherwise love and in ways we wouldn't otherwise know through his Spirit. It is that simple.
It isn't me who loves people that I don't know just because they need help. It isn't me who has compassion for the homeless or the brokenhearted or the child from the broken home.
It's Jesus.
But Jesus is in me. "It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me," Galatians 2:20. And the Holy Spirit "has been given to us" (verse 5).
And so it is truly Jesus loving through me that gives me the ability to love in ways otherwise impossible.
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So it is hope that gives us the ability to have joy that we wouldn't otherwise be able to have. And we know how it is we come to have hope. It is through the process Paul outlines right here.
"Suffering produces endurance"
"Endurance produces character"
"Character produces hope"
"And hope does not put us to shame"
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There is no shame in having hope. There is no shame in seeing the potential that no one else sees in broken and hurting places and situations. There is nothing foolish about that. There is everything Christlike about that.
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Now in this process we can all think of people who have stopped at all kinds of different places along the path to hope.
Some people suffer and stay stuck in the role of a victim. They get blindsided and become paralyzed to even maneuver or handle the situation which is at hand. They don't develop endurance; they don't develop character. They simply feel as though everything is unfair and can't see past the fact that they have been wronged.
Some people suffer and become calloused. They endure. They endure and endure and endure and endure but nothing comes from it other than they become numb. No matter what happens, and no matter what suffering exists, they feel nothing because their life is about enduring. And that is all.
Some people endure and become individuals with strong character. And they get a good handle on things. They understand the world better than they ever have. But they are negative. They become frozen in the perspective that the world is what it is; the world is disappointing. The potential for more is unlikely, and the opportunity for change is low.
They see the world through the world's eyes.
They refuse to let hope and love that they wouldn't otherwise manifest itself in them really take root.
Because hope seems foolish.
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But it isn't. There is no shame and no foolishness in seeing the potential in the world. There is only rejoicing and joy.
It just makes sense that joy is a fruit of the Spirit, doesn't it?
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Let our sufferings build in us endurance that gives us a character of hope.
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Peace.
